week 4: into the city
Last week we heard Jonah calling out from the depths of the sea, inside a great fish. Inside this fish, Jonah can no longer run from God, so turns to God in repentance, and the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land. By the time of chapter two, we may have given up on a Jonah, but God hasn’t. God doesn’t shame or condemn Jonah. Tonight’s passage begins with God calling to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
There are shades of Jesus’ reinstatement of Simon Peter in this. On the night when Jesus was betrayed, Peter denied that he knew Jesus three times. After his resurrection, Jesus gave Peter three opportunities to confess him and his love for Jesus, to correspond to each of Peter’s previous denials. After Peter’s triple confession of his love for Jesus, Jesus re-instates Peter to the apostolic ministry he appointed him to: “Feed my sheep…Follow me.” (John 21).
Why did Jesus give Peter a second chance? Why did God give Jonah a second chance? Because God loved them, and also those he sent them to minister to. In tonight’s text, we see God’s concern for the Ninevites; that they have the opportunity to hear God’s word, repent and be saved.
Jonah’s feelings of anxiety and trepidation are understandable. Nineveh was considered to be the greatest city on Earth in its time. Prophet Nahum described Nineveh as ‘the city of blood’. The cruel, ruthless military tactics of torture and massacre are pictured in carved gypsum reliefs in the British Museum—an ancient day horror movie of the most sickening kind.
[Tue 6 Nov 2018 11.01 AEDT Last modified on Thu 20 Oct 2022 01.16 AEDT]
As Jonah—a lone, unarmed man—approaches the vast, imposing 12 kilometre fortified city wall, I wonder if he thought he was really going to achieve anything. Can you imagine going to the clubrooms of the Hell’s Angels, or the Finks, and saying “Hey—In 40 days, you guys are gonna be overthrown”. Would you do that?
What likelihood do you think you would make it out alive?
Of course, none of us would do that, and even if we did that on our own will, it would likely not go well for us. The difference for Jonah was that God had called him to go to Nineveh and do this. Jonah would not have to work out what to say because God would give him the message. So, Jonah obeys the word of the Lord the second time around, and goes to the ‘City of blood’. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
But what happens?
It’s a miracle!!!!
They believed God!!!
This is a massive lesson for Jonah—one from which we can learn also: if God called Jonah, it meant that God would be up to something. He would go before Jonah, and he would open their ears to hear his word, and soften their hearts to receive it. God is the author and perfecter of faith, not Jonah. The New Testament parallel is in Luke 10, when Jesus sends his disciples out to the villages, and told them to announce, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ The Kingdom of God has come near to the villages because Jesus is with the disciples as their unseen companion. Creation of faith is up to Jesus, not the disciples. Whoever opens their homes to the disciples only do so because Jesus is first there, opening their hearts, which is why Jesus adds: “Whoever receives you receives me.”
Jonah had forgotten that God is in the business of creating faith—or perhaps he had not realised it in the first place. He ran from God because he looked to himself and his vast inadequacy before the mighty Ninevites, instead of looking to the Almighty God, the Maker of the seas and the dry land. “What could puny little prophet Jonah do” we might imagine him asking himself. Well, nothing, by his own strength—except that which God called him to do. Jonah had to learn to trust that the rest was up to God.
God put Jonah in a position to see the sheer inability of him being able to do anything, apart from relying on God’s strength. We’re reminded of the people of old God had freed from slavery in Egypt, only to bring them to the shores of the Red Sea, as the Egyptian army charged at them. God was teaching them to look away from their own strength, their own capacity, their own wisdom, their own strategies. He said: “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:14).
This was what Jonah needed to learn.
When Jonah preached, the Ninevites believed God! They didn’t even delay to think things over. They came to faith straight away:
“The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.” When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.
This was God’s work and doing. One of the big temptations for the church is to think that once we have figured out how to do church right, then the people will come, and if we keep doing church right they will stay, and we attribute the number of people in our church to our own effort and skill. But the goal isn’t that people will hear the gospel and believe us—it’s that they will hear and believe God. God said to Jonah: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
Like he did with Jonah, God will also work through, and in spite of, our faults and weaknesses, if only we would look to him to. If God could work through Jonah, then he can certainly use our service to him, no matter how imperfect it may be. God did what Jonah did not initially think possible: through his proclamation, God brought radical change to a wicked, hard-hearted people, from the greatest to the least. They put on sackcloth, the visible, communal display of lament and mourning; a confession of human poverty.
Even the King humbled himself. He is no longer the ruler. He no longer decides and decrees. He is off the throne and instead of his royal robes, he too wears sackcloth and ashes. This is profoundly public showing: the king has laid down claim to his throne, because God is king over all. And God’s Kingdom is not like the kingdoms of earth which rule by force, and are often tyrannical and oppressive, ruling by exploitation, violence to satisfy the thirst for power and greed. God’s Kingdom rules by his powerful Spirit so that sinners may know his grace and receive favour and blessing. He rules not to oppress, but free. He rules not to hoard, but to give away. He rules not to extinguish life but grant fulness of life. He rules not by cursing but by blessing. He rules not with might, yet he is far more powerful than any military. For as the Psalmist says in Psalm 107:16 he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron.
God uses no angle grinder or bolt cutters for this, just his word to change people’s hearts: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
The King issues a decree in Nineveh: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
This is a radical, dramatic turning around of things for the Ninevites, not forced by an army, or weapons, or invasion, but by a word—God’s powerful word. God’s word leads not just to changed minds and lips, but changed hearts that drive a completely different outlook and behaviours, aligning to God’s ways. We are saved by grace through faith, but faith shows itself in works—but even then the works God has prepared for us beforehand (Ephesians 2:10).
Sometimes it is hard to trust God. It’s hard to hand over our visions, plans, schemes, to God. Like Jonah, it might be hard to see how following God could make a difference in daunting situations before us. Not only might it seem difficult, it might even seem impossible. Jonah thought it impossible. That’s why he ran.
But in tonight’s passage, we see that with God, all things are possible, because God is King. God cannot be boxed in by the disobedience of Jonah. He cannot be boxed in by the wickedness of Nineveh. He comes to stop Jonah from charting the course of his own life, and redirects Jonah to conform to his will. He comes to dethrone the King of Nineveh and his evil ways, of oppression, violence, greed, bullying and brutality.
The human way is to enthrone ourselves as king of our lives. We might not be violent like the King of Nineveh, but we can limit others and be controlling over others in the pursuit of our plans and agendas. We can often curse rather than bless, even if secretly in our hearts. Rather than serve, we can insist that others serve our will. We can be like Jonah, charting our own course for our lives, trying to squeeze God to fit into our image we have of him. We might think it truly impossible that God would do as he promises in his word in our circumstances. It might seem that our enemies, our burdens, our challenges for life and church are just too great and God couldn’t do as he says for us.
So that leaves us with the question: will we get up off the throne? Will we take off the royal robe? Will we clothe our hearts in sackcloth and sit in ashes as it were…even as we began Lent by wearing ashes in the shape of a cross? Will we also humble ourselves, and hand over to God our claim to be the ruler of our life? Because that posture is the best for us and that is what Christ has saved us for.
It’s a faint connection, but it’s there—the King in our text reminds us of Jesus, who Pilate called ‘the King of the Jews’. Jesus told Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world”.
Jesus is the King from out of this world. He got up off his throne when he came all the way from heaven to earth, to the lowest place, among the common people, an embryo inside his mother’s womb, born in a filthy manger, clothed in swaddling cloths. He knew the wardrobe of sackcloth and ashes, the place of fear and lament, of emptiness and brokenness as he cried out on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was unrobed, stripped naked and humiliated and mocked in public, before his agonising death. That’s where God did not relent in bringing judgment, but instead of pouring it out on us, he poured it out on his own Son, though he had done nothing wrong. Jerusalem became the new city of blood, when Christ was nailed to a Cross. Though he was innocent, Jesus was crucified as a criminal for the world; for you and me, before the King was clothed in strips of linen, and buried in a tomb.
Such is God’s love for everyone. That is his love for you. By his blood you are ransomed from the grave and reconciled to God, your sin is paid for and you are washed clean. By his death his weakness is our perfect strength. His wounds are our hiding place. His righteousness alone covers us, whoever looks to him in faith. Jesus breathed his last for you, so that you can trust him with your life. Because three days later God showed that nothing is impossible for him…not even rising from death. That’s why you can commend your body and soul, and all that is yours to him. And all that is yours includes your fears and failings, your uncertainty and frailty. Place it in his hands which were pierced for you, pierced so that nothing can separate you from the Lord of God in Christ Jesus, the Saviour of the world, and the Lord of heaven and earth. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Lent, 2026
